Customers are a business’s top priority. If you do not meet your customer’s needs or make them happy, they will likely buy from the competition, jeopardizing the success of your brand. For this reason, it is critical to determine whether or not your business is delivering what your target customers want, and the best way to do this is by collecting feedback. Customer feedback can help you improve your products and services, gauge satisfaction, make existing clients feel special, retain clients, and improve your brand image.

According to a recent report, 77% of consumers develop a positive view of a brand that asks for and accepts client feedback. If you are wondering how customers feel about your products and services or what they want, here are eight strategies to collect customer feedback to help you find out.

1. Social media listening

Customers no longer view social media platforms as a place for entertainment only. They will likely share their experiences and thoughts on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter, whether bad or good. Potential customers even ask their peers on social media about specific brands or products before deciding to buy. This makes social media an excellent place to determine what people say about your brand and even gain helpful insights about misunderstandings, concerns, and questions your target audience could have about your services and products.

Read comments on your social media pages and respond to customer concerns, join relevant discussions or even start one, pay more attention to threads on conversations your target customers often engage in or post polls and surveys to get feedback. Be sure to invest in tools like Social Mention, HootSuite, and Klout to determine what people are saying about your brand or products and services in real-time.

2. Provide email support

Although email is an old form of digital communication, most customers prefer emailing when doing business. According to a recent report, 29% of online users love emailing because they can write detailed messages and even incorporate pictures. To prompt your customers to provide feedback, you should:

• Develop clear expectations: A customer may be hesitant to give feedback because they may assume that you do not care or they will not hear from you. For this reason, you should consider providing an exact timeline on when you intend to get back to them. For instance, you could add a “we will get back to you in X days” in your email.
• Organize email feedback: Teach employees how to manage Gmail multiple inboxes if your team often monitors more than one Gmail inbox to reduce the chances of helpful input from clients going unnoticed.
• Send personalized emails

3. Offer incentives to encourage survey participation

Customer surveys are an excellent strategy to gain critical insights into your products and services, customer service, and marketing. However, it can be challenging to get individuals to take the surveys. Consider offering incentives when distributing surveys in exchange for the effort and time required to complete a survey. This broadens the pool of participants and encourages them to provide honest feedback and opinion. Be sure to compare the survey results to previous feedback and current and future goals and make the necessary adjustments to improve your product, customer support services, and marketing.

4. Utilize the Net Promoter Score

While surveys can give detailed feedback about your products and services, most clients find them too overwhelming and time-consuming and will likely bail out of them. A fast and effective way to determine how customers feel about your brand is using the Net Promoter Score (NPS).

NPS is a client satisfaction benchmark that gauges how likely an existing client is to recommend your products and services to family, friends, and acquaintances. The response scale ranges from zero to 10, with zero being not likely and 10 most likely. You could then average the responses across the clientele to develop a clear picture of how customers feel about your products. 

5. Provide live chat support for customer feedback

Offering live chat support does not only help you keep customers coming back and improve conversion rates. It also encourages buying customers to leave feedback. Customers often use the live chat feature to share complaints and grievances, find solutions to their queries, and seek assistance.

The questions or grievances shared are feedback, and you can exploit the information to improve your company’s products and services. Live chat support also enables you to provide solutions to client problems quickly. However, ensure you use live chat software that allows you to save transcripts for feedback review.

6. Text clients immediately after a purchase or service

Be sure to invest in feedback software to allow you to send text surveys immediately after a client purchases from you. This enables you to obtain feedback in real-time. It also allows you to respond to an unsatisfied client promptly and develop a strategy to remedy the problem, increasing the chances of the client purchasing from you again. According to a recent report, 70% of consumers will likely buy from you when their problems are resolved.

7. Call your customers

An effective way to obtain feedback, especially when your job mainly involves speaking to clients over the phone, is calling them. This enables you to get real-time personalized responses. Speaking to a client directly over the phone is also an excellent opportunity to invite them to participate in a satisfaction survey.

However, you need to be careful when contacting clients over the phone. Avoid calling clients during lunch breaks. Recent reports show that the best times to get clients are 8 am to 9 am and 4 pm to 5 pm. You should also have a perfect script when calling them. Be sure to show genuine concern and avoid marketing or trying to close a deal. Ensure your call is centered around gathering feedback while showing the customer that you care and value their opinion.

8. Use customer feedback buttons

Make capturing customer feedback simple and quick by placing clickable feedback buttons strategically on your website or at the end of service chats. For instance, you could use a smiley face emoji button to survey existing customers, prospects, and site visitors as they navigate through your website to get feedback on an experience you are creating. 

Endnote on Customer Feedback

Producing quality products and amping your marketing strategy to attract more customers is not enough. You should further determine whether your products meet your audience’s needs and where to make adjustments to achieve your bottom line through customer feedback. Use NPS and feedback buttons, provide email and live chat support, offer incentives for survey participation, and contact clients via phone to capture customer feedback.